Tenchi Meisatsu
Ubukata Tow Introduced Shibukawa Harumi

Date：31, Mar, 2022
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
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Ubukata Tow was born in 1977, made his debut as a novelist while belonging to the Waseda University. He dropped out of the university, has been active as a novelist and screenwriter until now (2022). Tenchi Meisatsu is one of his works, published as a book in 2009 November. It got so popular, turned into the 2012 film directed by Takita Yojiro.

Tenchi Meisatsu describes Japan in the middle of the 17th century, we can find revising the calendar system as the main theme. From the 9th century until then, they had used the old calendar system over 800 years. And it clearly had an error which often got obstacle on their daily life somehow. It was obvious that they had to set a new calendar system at once. But how did they do for it? Then appeared a male scholar Shibukawa Harumi (a.k.a Shibukawa Shunkai).

The story consists of the 6 chapters except the prologue. Reading it, we can get how hard Shibukawa Harumi lived and worked for revising the system, how impressive the first Japan-made calendar system appeared. Life is worth living hard if there is solidly your role, it may tell you.